Iran first Gaza second

Treat Gaza as an island and you will always end up surprised by the tides. The Strip is not a closed aquarium. It is a tank fed by pipes that run through Tehran. Anyone who tries to design peace in Gaza while ignoring the engineers of its violence will keep treating symptoms and never the disease. A credible plan begins where the weapons begin. It makes Iran pay a visible price for  arming and instructing its clients until the flow of matériel slows to a crawl. 

The first task is sanctions that bite. Not the theatrical sort that decorate a press conference, but the  forensic kind that make shippers hesitate. When enforcement is real, front companies die young. Tankers idle. When enforcement is lax, money moves and rockets move with it. Fewer dollars in Tehran mean fewer weapons in the tunnels. Pressure on oil exports and the shadow banking that launders them should be a habit, not a headline. 

The second task is interdiction with memory. There were years when weapons flights did not land  and convoys developed mysterious mechanical problems. Behaviour changed. Deterrence lives in  the quartermaster’s mind. He does not need to know how a crate failed to arrive. He needs only to doubt that the next one will. A serious plan restores that doubt without boasting and without pageantry. 

The third task is to place the cost of proxy warfare on the sponsor, not just on the client. The region  lives with a polite fiction in which each militia appears immaculate and fatherless. Hamas, Hizbullah, and the militias in Syria and Iraq share training, methods, and supply chains. When one fires, the trunk should feel the tremor. That means targeting logistics, finance, procurement officers, and the transit nodes that make the trade possible. Freeze the network and the tempo slows. 

Once the trunk is pressured, Gaza policy can become sane. The sequence must run borders, then security, then administration, then ballots. Reverse it and you get theatre. Elections in the presence  of armed factions produce masks, not legitimacy. A plan with a chance of surviving the week will prioritise a hard perimeter, monitored crossings, and verified dismantling of stockpiles. Funds should be released in stages against demonstrable demilitarisation and clean procurement. Concrete that goes into schools should not become the roof of a tunnel. 

Neighbours have work, not poetry. Egypt must police Rafah. That means scanners that work, guards who are paid, and an acceptance that smuggling is not a harmless craft. Qatar must choose between mediator and patron. If Doha wishes to be a trusted broker, it must show control over flows of cash and influence. A credible arrangement would place measurable conditions on funding, with consequences felt in days. 

Israel’s part is not gentle. The state will guard its civilians and retain the means to strike when new stockpiles appear. A White House can exchange tactical latitude for strategic structure. Jerusalem can be given operational space if it accepts a defined framework for what comes next, with neighbours that prefer quiet borders to revolutionary projects acting as guarantors. 

The humanitarian imperative does not vanish. It becomes achievable. Aid convoys matter only  when rockets are not already on order. Clinics and classrooms last only when cement does not 

disappear into a shaft. Break the supply chain and ambulances are not followed by funerals. Keep the supply chain and no volume of blankets will make a moral difference. 

Europe will issue statements and then provide money. Gulf capitals will complain in private and  fund the parts that suit their interests. The uncertainty sits in Washington. Does it have the will to focus on the trunk rather than the branches? Does it still understand that peace is a by-product of deterrence and enforcement? 

Gaza is quieter for the moment. Hamas is weakened, though not extinguished. Hostages have come  home. This is not an ending. It is an interval set by the severity of pressure placed on Tehran and its facilitators. Begin there and normal life in Gaza becomes possible. Begin at the shoreline with  committees and slogans, and the next round is pencilled into the calendar. Real peace will be  counted in the cargo that never sailed, the crate that never arrived, and the rocket that was never built.